(light entertainment) The winter nights light even brighter during the 14th Montréal en Lumière, a festival of food, free outdoor activities (a ferris wheel, an ice slide and more!), music, theatre and dance shows, and other entertainment. Gourmet cuisine comes in all shapes and sizes at the festival, from multi-course meals to cheese samplings – see our Top 5 food picks for ideas. Tango enthusiasts and the curious are in for a treat at tango-meets-cabaret-meets-circus show and milonga La Pista Tango, the art of singer Tonny Bennett is on display, French music star -M- plays February 22, theatre-dance show The Humanity Project provokes deep thoughts, Haitian-born Québécois artist Marie-Josée Lord sings February 25, singer and pianist Diana Krall entrances in a solo concert on February 26, and none other than The Zombies rock out on February 28.

(circus & butterflies) Add far more than a dash of bright colour to snowy days at the 34th Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain, a internationally touring circus show featuring some of the top circus acts from the Paris-based competition of the same name, including acrobats, trapeze artists, jugglers, clowns, contortionists and more, to March 2 at La Tohu. More brightness awaits at the Butterflies Go Free exhibition at the Montreal Botanical Gardens, where 2000 butterflies and moths from around the world take up residence until the end of April. Or step outside at the Old Port to see the astounding athlethics involved in the Ice Canoe Races on February 23.

(dance & theatre) For the first time in Canada, the National Ballet of China performs Raise the Red Lantern, a classical Western ballet interpretation of Zhang Yimou’s dramatic film of the same name – the director even added his creative voice to the production by writing the libretto, designing the lighting and signing the stage direction – on stage February 22-24 at Place des Arts, presented by Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal. Danse Danse presents Corps de Walk, a thoroughly cool, contemporary-culture show (in music, movement and style) by choreographers Gai Behar and Sharon Eyal and 12 dancers of The Norwegian National Company of Contemporary Dance, February 28 and March 1-2 at Place des Arts.

(travel with art) Take a different kind of walk around downtown’s happening Quartier des Spectacles to the tune of Luminothérapie: use your iPhone or mp3 player to interact with art project Le jour des 8 soleils by artist Pascal Grandmaison who tells a story through video projects video projections on buildings in the area, from Berri-UQAM metro station to Place des Festivals and points in between. Indoors, visit Peru through its art, history and culture, presented in stunning detail at the MMFA’s Peru: Kingdoms of the Sun and Moon. The Musee d’art Contemporain features intriguing large-scale colour photography by celebrated photographer Lynne Cohen and an immersive, mysterious multi-room installation called Uraniborg, by French multidisciplinary artist Laurent Grasso.

(live music) Old Montreal cultural hub the PHI Centre hosts Thus: Owls on Friday, February 22 and follows that up on Saturday, February 23 with amazing Haiti fundraiser party Kanaval Kanape, with performances by Arcade Fire with Haitian group Doody & Kami and a dancetastic afterparty – in partnership with Black History Month Montreal. Also on Friday, ska-rock the night away with The Planet Smashers at Club Soda, while Bosnian Rainbows play Cabaret du Mile End and the good folks at Passovah Productions throw a party with Young Galaxy, Valleys and many more (plus doughnuts from Chez Boris!) at Il Motore. On Saturday night, dance to the electronic music of Bordello, Vosper and Jealous Lovers at the SAT. On Sunday, the MSO hosts conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky and pianist Viktoria Postnikova, while The Montreal New Music International Festival showcases some of the best in new classical and experimental works. On February 25, feel the Irish spirit with Celtic Woman, February 25 at Place des Arts. On February 26, indie-experimental-rock artist Eels  is at Theatre Corona, and on February 27, Swedish House Mafia makes the Bell Centre thump.

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Arsenal was already among the city’s biggest non-museum art spaces, but as of last week they’ve broken their own records. With a brand new show dramatically titled Like Thunder Out of China, uniting nearly 50 works by contemporary Chinese artists, they revealed a massive (think 22,000 square feet) section of the building that was as of yet unused. Part cavernous exhibition hall, part loading dock, the possibilities for parties (Grand Prix and Fashion Week are already regular clients) are endlessly exciting.

The art on view also does the space justice: The showstopper is the famous Miss Mao 3 by the Gao brothers, an 8-foot-tall stainless steel bust of Mao sporting huge inflated breasts, a creepy doll smile and a Pinocchio nose. (Is it any surprise the work is banned from exhibition in China?) The father of Chinese pop art, Qui Jie, contributes a series of drawings replacing politicians’ heads with those of cats – another sort of derision, only cuter. In fact, all the art was chosen for its cheeky spunk, its dissidence, its ability to comment on the state of China today from within. All the artists included still call China home.

When you hear Chinese art you may automatically think Ai Weiwei – he’s not included in this show, which focuses on the younger generation, but Like Thunder Out of China does mark the Canadian launch of the book Weiwei-isms and MAO, the complete book of his Mao iconography. Check it out in person, in the beautiful Arsenal space.

THE DETAILS

Like Thunder Out of China, Until July 27, 2013

Arsenal, 2020 William, (514) 931-9978

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This world premiere opening on February 2, fully organized, mounted and toured by the MMFA, is loftier than any anthropological-style expo you might imagine because it covers thousands of years of history, including Peruvian art produced in modern times. In addition to displaying an extensive collection of pre-Columbian treasures and masterpieces from the colonial era to Indigenism, including over 100 pieces that have never before been seen outside of Peru, you will be able to bask in modern Peruvian creativity.

As curator Victor Pimentel says, “Through the representation and reinterpretation of myths, rituals and other primordial symbols of identity captured by different artistic traditions, the exhibition will illustrate how the evocative power of images have influenced the history of pre-Hispanic, colonial and modern Peru.” Here are three treasures you simply can’t miss seeing.

1) A photograph by the wonderful Amerindian artist Martín Chambi, titled Tristeza andina, La Raya, from 1933. At the beginning of the 20th century, Indigenism flourished as an artistic and intellectual movement in Peru based on revalorizing and reaffirming the country’s indigenous heritage. Works depicting scenes of Native life and the idyllic landscapes of the Peruvian countryside and highlands such as this one were to transform the visual culture of Peru in the modern era.

2) The figurehead work of the exhibition, featured on its posters and promotional material: A Mochica frontal ornament in the shape of a half-feline, half-octopus dating from 100-800 A.D. and recently repatriated and exhibited for the first time outside of Peru. Made of pure gold and intricately carved, it symbolizes the constant dialogue between the world of the living and the world of the dead that was an essential component of Andean spirituality.

3) A beautiful anonymous 18th century painting titled Young Virgin Spinning, from the era after the Spanish conquest of Peru in the 16th century that led to the hybridization of the Peruvian culture. Paintings like this one, from the School of Cuzco – established by the Spanish as a means of converting the Incas to Catholicism – testify to the powerful role played by images in the campaign to evangelize the Native peoples of the Andes.

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THE DETAILS

Peru: Kingdoms of the Sun and Moon,  February 2 to June 16, 2013

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1380 Sherbrooke West, (514) 285-2000

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There aren’t many galleries that play sweet jazz as you peruse the art, but the Galerie Lounge TD isn’t your ordinary gallery. On the second floor of the Maison du Festival Rio Tinto Alcan, on Sainte-Catherine Street in the Quartier des Spectacles, this gallery sits in the centre of Montreal’s musical scene.

Above the Jazz Fest space that hosts some of the world’s biggest music performers, half the art gallery is dedicated to a collection of popular Quebec art that’s for sale (there are pieces by famous artists like Armand Vaillancourt and Afred Pellan, as well as by musicians like Diane Dufresne), and the other half to solo exhibitions that usually relate to music.

The current solo boasts all recent works by local legend Barbeau, officer of the Order of Canada and a figurehead of the Quebec visual arts scene for close to seven decades now. The abstract painter, who developed the Automatist movement in the 1940s alongside founder Paul-Émile Borduas, presents a collection of 2011 and ‘12 canvases and works on paper featuring colour explosions, geometric compositions and rainbow-hued sunbursts.

And in homage to the locale, the curators take a new look at Barbeau’s career through the lens of music – examining movement, rhythm and harmony in his use of colour and line.

The idea of rhythm and syncopation prevails throughout the works on display, through their gestural expressionism and the pointillist brushstrokes that Barbeau is exploring these days. The idea of movement, though, is particularly evocative – in an National Film Board film that’s showing in the gallery space, titled Marcel Barbeau: Libre comme l’art, a dancer is asked to create movement with one of Barbeau’s large-scale metal sculptures.

Her actions really bring the sculpture to life, and shed a new light on the small sculptures that sit around the gallery; it’s as if the materials struck a pose, mid-dance, and have been frozen in time. After seeing the film, I could picture the painter, also, physically sparring with his canvases, paintbrush in hand, leaving his trace… I guess music was in the air, in more ways than one.

(PS- Admission is free!)

THE DETAILS

Marcel Barbeau: Movement, Rhythm and Harmony, Until December 23, 2012

Galerie Lounge TD, 305 Sainte-Catherine West, (514) 288-8882

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Welcome to A History of Impressionism, a travelling exhibition of 75 works usually housed at The Clark in small-town Massachussetts. The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute is a world-renowned institution nestled in the Berkshires, founded by the Clarks in 1950 to house their personal – and jaw-dropping – art and artifact collection. It counts many of the most history-changing French paintings the world has known, and now they’re here in our fair city! Here are five masterpieces you just can’t afford to miss seeing in the flesh.

The Snake Charmer, by Jean-Léon Gérôme: An icon of the Orientalist fashion so popular in the 19^th century, this painting is one of Gérome’s most detailed and jewel-coloured works in the academic style developed at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Sterling Clark grew up with this work in his living room, and had his own chance to purchase it year later, after his father had sold it. The smooth skin of the young boy contrasts with the scales of the snake in a way that heightens this risky conflation of innocence with danger.
The Bath, by Berthe Morisot: One of the only female Impressionists as well as a member of the haute bourgeoisie, Morisot was no exception to the restricting rules of conduct that governed women of the time. Therefore unlike many of her fellow artists, she refrained from painting exterior scenes and rather painted scenes that she was intimate with, like a woman’s toilette. Here, the brushstroke and inventive mix of colours – everything from pale blue to rich yellow figures in the pale pink background – are quintessentially Impressionistic.

A Box at the Theatre (At the Concert), by Pierre-Auguste Renoir: There’s a reason Renoir has become synonymous with chocolate boxes and romance: he spent much of his career illustrating his love of the female form, painting women and feminine sensuality in soft-brushed tones of pretty pink punctuated by high-octane detailing. Here, two pale-faced girls sit patiently waiting in a lushly-velveted theatre box. Unlike some of his Impressionist brethren, Renoir had a fascination for scenes of urban life rather than pastoral settings.

Dancers in the Classroom, by Edgar Degas: Renowned for his countless paintings of ballerinas (you’ll find them reprinted of cups and umbrellas in museum shops the world over), Degas has rarely composed his space as interestingly as in this painting. The majority of the foreground is dominated by a wide open space in the dance room. This breathing space, which makes the pretty dancers and their prink and red accessories stand out that much more, shows the influence of Japanese wood cuts on the French painter.

Young Christian Girl, by Paul Gauguin: Recognized as one of his most “modern” works, this painting by Gauguin makes it clear why he was deemed a peerless colourist. This celebration of yellow makes the painting’s subject, a praying girl, altogether secondary to the formal qualities of its shapes and hues, therefore showing the great influence of the artist’s stay in Tahiti. Local art and the brilliant colours of the island’s natural environment encouraged the painter to play with flattened forms and an unrealistically expressive palette.

THE DETAILS

A History of Impressionism, October 13, 2012 to January 20, 2013

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1380 Sherbrooke West, (514) 285-2000

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In keeping with its mandate to involve artists in every way possible, the MMFA decided to involve Montreal collectives En Masse, Paprika and Rita to liven up their 16,000 square-foot art and education studios, where countless classes are given to kids of all ages.

En Masse is an intrepid fraternity of 30-plus boundary-breaking Montreal artists that has communal creativity as its very raison d’être. Mostly makers of street art, the collective first got involved with the museum last year with the super popular exhibition Big Bang. Their room in that show, painted, drawn and collaged from floor to ceiling in a black-and-white fairytale universe, was an absolute crowd favourite. Managed by the trio of Jason Botkin, Rupert Bottenberg and Fred Caron, En Masse makes murals where every participant – whether culled from a background in comic art, commercial illustration, graffiti or design – retains the freedom to create what they want. The result is ever-changing and fantastical.

“We’ve become big fans of En Masse,” says Nathalie Bondil, Director and Chief Curator of the MMFA. “After the scheduled disappearance of the impressive fresco they executed last year for our exhibition Big Bang, I wanted to give them another opportunity to exercise their creativity. As a link between the museum and the street, they are standard-bearers for the freedom of artistic expression for everyone, without barriers or discrimination.”

In addition to the mural work by En Masse, the new learning environment boasts multicoloured mobiles by Paprika and wacky furniture by Rita. There are also plush rainbows by Montreal artist Claude Cormier – because everybody needs a plush rainbow or two in life, right?

THE DETAILS

Michel de la Chenelière Art & Education Studios, 1380 Crescent Street, (514) 285-1600

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Fresh Paint Gallery is a pop up art gallery devoted to street art and graffiti that has come about due to a collaboration between Montreal’s Under Pressure festival and Faubourg Saint-Laurent, an organization of merchants and institutions based in the city’s downtown core. Under Pressure, the graffiti festival founded in 1996, has long held its annual event behind the nearby Foufounes Electriques, making the fest’s founder, Sterling Downey, the perfect person to spearhead this endeavor.

As a pop up gallery, the artwork and artists will be changed every couple of months and the space completely redone. In the gallery now you’ll find work from the collective En Masse, graf legend Cope and world-renowned artist Zilon.

One of the real stars of Fresh Paint, which aims to be both a gallery and space for events, is the building itself. Built in 1908, this pillar of Saint-Catherine was home to La Patrie, a Montreal paper published from 1879 to 1978. It was recently bought by the Church of Scientology, who, having abandoned their overhaul plans, allowed Under Pressure to take it over. It’s an impressive building in its own right, and with much of the artwork found directly on the walls of its first two floors, it creates an interesting juxtaposition of historic canvas and modern artwork. Pretty sure it’s accurate to say that there’s nothing else like it in the city. And entry is FREE, so you’ve really got no excuse not to pop into this great pop up.

THE DETAILS

Fresh Paint Gallery, 180 Saint-Catherine East

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I’ve chatted a few times now with Nathalie Bondil, the Chief Curator and Director of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. As a proud Montrealer, I love that she is conscious of the city as a whole; recognizing that we’re not all art intellectuals, Bondil’s mantra seems to be “art for the people”. After bringing international attention to the city with the fabulous and highly accessible Jean Paul Gaultier retrospective (which recently closed), the latest hype is happening just next door – and entry is FREE.

After a major renovation and expansion, the former Erskine and American Church has morphed into the Claire and Marc Bourgie Pavilion. You may have noticed the sleek marble entrance that contrasts almost poetically with the original structure, or the recently unveiled bronze sculpture by David Altmejd – a very young Montrealer, I might add, born in 1974. Altmejd’s imposing four-metre tall sculpture, The Eye, (pictured above), is a fitting welcome for the building, which highlights Quebec and Canadian Art.

The contemporary design of the multi-level, north-end expansion now showcases specific themes and time frames. Starting at the top, level four is all about Inuit Art; level three is Founding Identities (1700s to 1870s); level two is The Era of Annual Exhibitions (1880s to 1920s); level one is Towards Modernism (1920s to 1930s); and the street level is The Age of the Manifesto (1940s to 1960s), which includes a mini-gallery devoted to one of my favourite Quebecois artists Jean-Paul Riopelle (next to Marc-Aurèle Fortin and Jean Paul Lemieux).

And did I mention that you can see all of this for FREE? Even the audio-guide rental is FREE. Opening weekend (Oct. 14 to 16) will also host a series of FREE activities for all ages and interests, including films, lectures, story-telling sessions, drawing workshops and more.

Besides all this, as well as the rotating exhibitions and installations, the must-see space is certainly the new Bourgie Hall. It boasts 444 seats (133 original pews), ornate décor, and enchanting Tiffany stained-glass windows, which have been painstakingly restored and spiffied-up. October 11 is the first concert open to the public and keep this spot on your radar for a complete fall and winter 2011-12 season of musical programming produced by the Arte Musica Foundation and various Montreal music organizations. There are two new Steinway pianos, two harpsichords, a chamber organ and a clavicytherium. I have no idea what the latter is, but I guess that’s just one more reason to go.

The Bourgie Hall will host about 130 spectacles. Busy professionals might want to take note of the Musical 5-à-7 series where you can kick back with an after-work cocktail, mingle with like-minded folk, then at 6 p.m. escape for an hour to the tune of chamber-music classics, world music or jazz. There will be ten of these Thursday concerts between now and next June. This, though, you have to pay for. Personally, I’m already looking forward to some bossa nova in February.

Finally, I must share with you another museum festivity also debuting this fall. The Big Bang exhibit will be open on November 6 and run until January 22, 2012 in the Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion, which is just across the street. For this, Bondil gave carte blanche to 18 Quebec artists to create an installation of their choice. This unique, multimedia love-in brings together filmmaker Denys Arcand, musician Melissa Auf der Maur, dancer Marie Chouinard, muralists Collectif En Masse, singer/songwriter Pierre Lapointe, playwright Wajdi Mouawad, circus artist Jeannot Painchaud, fashion designer Renata Morales, cartoonist Michel Rabagliati and architect Gilles Saucier, just to name a few.

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THE DETAILS

Claire and Marc Bourgie Pavilion at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1380 Sherbrooke West, (514) 285-2000

Bourgie Concert Hall, 1339 Sherbrooke Street West, (514) 285-2000

Photo Credit: Patricia Gajo

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Edward Burtynsky: Oil is, as the title implies, about oil. Huge colour photos (56 in all) by famed photographer Edward Burtynsky examines the substance on which the world runs. What struck me immediately was the sense of scale. His landscapes – the oil fields, sun-lit silhouettes of oil rigs sitting in the sea and storage areas  – are all vast. My favourite is a zig-zagging oil pipe, whose shiny silver surface slices through a forest, its greenness razed to make room for the pipe’s path.

And therein lies Burtnsky’s quiet message. For years, the principle behind the artist’s images has been how industry is affecting our environment – and not in a good way. But the nature he shows us is blemished; disfigured by the marks of man, be it clear-cut trees or over-used marble quarries. The McCord exhibition is organized thematically. First, the images of refining sites show the origin of oil’s pivotal power.  Then the photos document the world of transportation. Finally, the end of oil is shown.  With Edward Burtynsky’s empathetic eye, a terrible beauty is born as the artist renders oil – a subject  wrought with issues of politics, policies and pollution -  into stunning scenes. (TIP: Edward Burtynsky will be at the McCord to talk about his work on Thursday October 6 at 6:30 p.m. His exhibit opens the same day.)


Ever wonder what Montreal used to look like?  Well, now you can. Montreal’s McCord Museum has launched an exciting ‘treasure hunt’ via a free cutting edge app. For a museum dedicated to preserving the old – the history of Montreal– that’s pretty cool!

IPhone owners can download an app called MTL Urban Museum which superimposes archival images over your smart phone’s camera view. I tried it out: it’s simple –and really fun! When you are walking around Montreal, look down. There are 150 sites – huge red dots that say McCord Museum MTL Urban Museum. Click on the app to see what that site looked like around 100 years ago. You can see then and now images simultaneously right on your smart phone. (Regular cell phones can get the info and a photo from another era, but only smart phones can drop in the superimposed images.) You can see all the images and more at the McCord. This great presentation has been added to the museum’s permanent exhibition.

The show highlights 10 facets of Montreal’s past – from its early occupants, through the wealth of the Golden Mile and the excitement of Expo 67. Each of the key historical moments is set up in its own space, showing items from that moment in time.  A few of my favourite things? A unicycle, with its huge yet delicate front wheel (how did they balance?!), and a hoop worn by ladies to support their long skirts. Curiously, the hoop looks like a Lady Gaga creation! At the entrance of each historical environment there are touch-screens, so you can listen to an historian describe the era in front of you.

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THE DETAILS

Edward Burtynsky: Oil, October 6, 2011 to January 8, 2012

McCord Museum, 690 Sherbrooke Street West, (514) 398-7100

Photo Credit: ©Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto.

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His 82-year old energy bowled me over! He lives surrounded by ‘‘inspiration’’ – rooms piled to the ceiling with old chairs, empty suitcases, and just ‘‘stuff I love’’. He confessed ‘‘I often find things in the garbage’’, giving a whole new take on objets trouvés – art created with objects that the artist finds.

After visiting Armand in his home for a Alice in Wonderland-type tour in which he showed me an astounding range of art and artefacts, the artist took me outside. His lawn is strewn with dinosaur-sized iron bits, rain-rusted and beautiful. He explained that one enormous log was ‘‘a hundred-year old tree trunk that had been cut and left in a park so I had it craned into my yard.’’ This leading figure in Quebec contemporary art is also a down-to-earth, passionate human being who finds wonder in the everyday.

The exhibition, On n’a pas de printemps à perdre?, celebrates Armand Vaillancourt’s past and present art: sculptures in both bronze and wood, installation ideas for public places, paintings and silk screens – most never before seen in public. At the vernissage, I noted sensational, sharp silk screens, calligraphic works created with his sure hand, as well as powerful paintings whose piled-on colours, applied with a palette knife, jump with joy, like Vaillancourt’s dynamic personality.

There is an interesting difference between his sculptures / installations and his works on paper. His sculptures are almost totemic: massive – and heavy. He handed me a bolt for holding one of the steel panels together in his latest piece: I could hardly lift it! Yet his paintings are bursting with an incredible lightness of being. They are gorged with buoyant hues. This innovative artist, who seems always to be smiling, has been a pioneer all his life.

His profound inventiveness is sought after for corporate collections as well as museums and public places. In San Francisco’s Embarcadero Plaza, for example, his monumental fountain created in 1971 bears witness to his technical and aesthetic ability. Here in Montreal we can enjoy his elegant elegaic to life: his own ode to joy. Witness it, , up close and personal, on September 8, when he puts on a live painting performance at the corner of Balmoral and Mayor.

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THE DETAILS

Armand Vaillancourt’s On n’a pas de printemps à perdre?, August 4 to September 18, 2011

Galerie Lounge TD, 305 Ste-Catherine Street West

Free admission

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